Social perception and social skill in schizophrenia

The relationship of social perception to social skill in schizophrenia was investigated. Twenty-six outpatients completed three social perception tasks (i.e. facial affect recognition, social cue recognition, and self-ratings of social skill) and participated in two role-plays. Correlational analyses revealed that the self-ratings of social skill had the most consistent relationship with social skill among the social perception measures, even after controlling for symptomatology and subject demographics. Other measures of social perception (i.e. social cue recognition) had weaker relationships with social skills. Implications for future research and psychosocial interventions are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.